Art, craft, projects and life with Gillian Cooper...
Artist, Tutor, Writer and Mother

Sunday, 24 July 2011

Music to work to

It's Sunday. Day of rest and relaxation for most. For me, however, it's been a full day of work. Whilst R and the kids have been outside enjoying the sunshine, I've been working hard in my lovely new studio.

On the weekends when I get full days of work, I've developed a good working rhythm in the past few weeks. One album worth of stitching on the sewing machine, then 30mins of painting listening to a radio programme on BBC's fabulous listen again function. My sewing machine is too noisy to listen to speech radio whilst stitching and I need to keep moving and changing activities to stop my shoulder going stiff.

Today's great mix was Keane, Kasabian, Kaiser Chiefs and The Killers, interspersed by the topical political comedy The Now Show, an episode of Front Row, a murder mystery called Baldi and I'm now part way through The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie.

All fun to listen to, but what about the work? I added details to several figures using oil stiks, having stitched the outlines in place. I have machine quilted part of a panel of one of the triptychs. I also started the final stitching on two of the figures. Not bad going and I still haven't finished! I'm just on a little break to watch the end of the Tour de France.